Google Fit: More than Just an Also Ran?

On the heels of Apple's health kit announcement, Google will aggregate APIs and create its own "Google Fit". And not far behind, apparently, Microsoft will soon join the race. Samsung is already in the race, as are a number of others. Google’s announcement will be unveiled at the Google I/O conference later this month.

As Alexia Tsosis writes in Techcrunch, one key is to make the data portable:

From what we’re hearing, Google Fit will track all sorts of health data, such as weight, heart rate, run times, body-building stats and more. Fit APIs already exist for sensors, data reporting and app history. End users will be able to sync their Google Fit profiles to their Google IDs, which will make their data portable no matter what app or device they’re using. Like an OAuth for fitness, Fit will “make fitness tracking a basic functionality for phones.”

But as she points out, it's not clear that any of the companies will win this race. Google already tried this in 2008. She also makes clear her favorite, Apple. Given its history with creating a market where others failed (see tablets, smart phones), it looks like a reasonable bet. But whether health monitoring will become ubiquitous is far from clear, given that the APIs have been around for a long time.

Open Source Virtualization Platform Docker Releases its Libswarm API

Docker, an open platform for distributed apps, has released an API to facilitate adoption. ebay uses it for an automated path for development. Spotify uses the platform to operate updates on its 5,000 servers.

As Christopher Tozzi points out in the VarGuy, Docker just got easier for application deployment:

Ultimately, then, libswarm serves to help keep the container-based virtualization world open and platform-agnostic (or at least Linux-distribution agnostic; Linux of some kind is still a prerequisite for Docker). That's good news as Docker continues to grow in popularity, offering a totally new way of deploying virtualized applications within the cloud.